Guest Blogger Ken Alex: Resilience and Adaptation
Post #7 in a Series on California Climate Policy by Ken Alex, Senior Policy Advisor to Gov. Jerry Brown
[This is the seventh post in a series expressing my view of why California’s actions on climate change are so important and how they will change the world. The introductory post provides an overview and some general context.]
Climate change has arrived. Our fire season never ends; we no longer know if we will have a rainy season or how much rain is now normal; our beaches are eroding; temperatures are rising; fog and wind patterns are changing. More is on the way. We can reduce the impacts by cutting emissions, but we need to deal with the consequences of what we have already emitted. That is the idea of resilience and adaptation.
There is no clear demarcation between mitigation (reduction of emissions) and resilience. For example, resilience involves the use of low emission building materials, building on in-fill sites and preserving agricultural lands. Those actions also reduce emissions.
Safeguarding California is the State’s blueprint for resilience and adaptation. AB 1482 directs the Natural Resources Agency to update the document every three years. In addition, the Governor’s Office and Planning and Research maintains an adaptation clearinghouse for state, regional, and local action and best practices, and runs the Integrated Climate Adaptation and Resilience Program. OPR also helped form the Alliance of Regional Collaboratives for Climate Adaptation, in conjunction with the Local Government Commission to focus on the regional nature of many adaptation and resilience issues. For example, the climate related issues for the Sierra regions differ significantly from those faced in the San Diego area.
California’s approach is to link local, regional, and state actions, and to replicate successes. Following the Rim Fire in Tuolumne County, state and local agencies teamed up to obtain a $70 million grant from HUD to build a community watershed and resilience program aimed at improved resilience to large scale fire events. The program will be designed for use across multiple fire-threatened areas of the California and beyond. In addition, one aspect of the program is exploring financing mechanisms around actions that improve water quality and that potentially can be monetized.
The State now requires integration of resilience and adaptation into all infrastructure planning. This is particularly important in light of the billions of dollars authorized by the legislature for transportation and transit under SB 1.
Next blog: Carbon Capture
Ken Alex is the Director of the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research, and serves as Senior Policy Advisor to Governor Jerry Brown and the Chair of the Strategic Growth Council.
Reader Comments
11 Replies to “Guest Blogger Ken Alex: Resilience and Adaptation”
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“Resilience and adaptation” appears to be code for “we give up on mitigation.”
Dear Jai,
Climate mitigation is a big lie and vast public corruption. The climate movement and Ken Alex are abandoning mitigation because they hope to be taken seriously and not simply dismissed as ignorant con artists and frauds. It may be too late to change their public image.
The level of mental delusion needed to believe that thousands of scientists speaking a hundred different languages around the world are all engaged in a conspiracy is extraordinary. It is only matched by your inability to see the straightforward way that fossil fuel money influences conservative politicians.
And here is a link to the previous comment that you avoided responding to: http://legal-planet.org/2018/02/22/the-social-cost-of-carbon-revisited/
Dear BBQ,
As you know from our previous conversations, I try to avoid arguments about climate change and gay marriage because this seldom bears fruit and is not a good use of time. Still I wonder why these two issues are so intimately connected, sort of joined at the hip. I digress, time to move along.
What on earth are you talking about? Who said anything about gay marriage?
Dear BBQ,
I did not mean to imply that you said anything about gay marriage (you did not). I am trying to explain why I refuse to argue about climate change. Gay marriage is mysteriously connected to climate change for unknown reasons that are not worth arguing about. Hope that helps.
Are you insane? You come on this board multiple times a week to post argumentative comments about climate change and then you say that you don’t want to argue about it because of gay marriage?
Honestly, do you suffer from mental health problems?
Dear BBQ,
I would consider having an intelligent discourse with someone who is not committed to gay marriage. I have never met nor heard of any climate kook who was not totally devoted to gay marriage and this tends to diminish the possibility of a reasonable discussion.
Why on earth are you insistent on bringing up gay marriage on an environmental forum??? The only person insistent on some mysterious connection is yourself.
There are zero people who want to have an intelligent conversation about climate change that also insist on linking it to gay marriage. Refusing to debate one issue based on another completely irrelevant issue is simply your smoke screen for your cowardly inability to defend your views on climate change on their merits.
For goodness sake, on the article from a few days ago, “The Social Cost of Carbon – Revisited,” you had the most childish response to another user carefully laying out the relationship between carbon dioxide and water. Using layman’s terms, he laid out the basic principles of how the levels of carbon dioxide determine the level of water in the atmosphere. Your response was essentially to plug your ears and say, LA LA LA I CAN’T HEAR YOU, I’M RIGHT AND YOU’RE WRONG, like a six-year-old on a playground. For anyone else reading this, here is the article I am talking about with BQRQ’s comment at the bottom:
http://legal-planet.org/2018/02/22/the-social-cost-of-carbon-revisited/
You run away from every debate you have started to lose and claiming your reason is because of some absurdly unrelated issue makes me seriously question your mental health.
Dear BBQ,
Your choice of words are personal and somewhat hurtful and that’s why I try to avoid arguing about climate change, it’s no use. Those of us who have already adapted don’t want to fight about it anymore. Let’s do the right thing and try to be tolerant, forgiving and respectful. Have a good day.
All you do is come on here and argue about climate change. How do you not see the absurdity of your claim that you don’t want to argue?